Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, September 21, 2021
Workers with smaller businesses lead among workers working from home
The smallest employers account for the most significant share of adults working from home. Throughout the US, UK, and Germany to Japan and China, nearly one in three (31%) workers working from home work for organizations with fewer than 20 employees. Among those not working from home, these smaller employers only make up one in six. This is a finding from our survey of 8,307 worker respondents across the US, Germany, UK, Japan, and China from TUP/Technology User Profile 2021.
Working from home not only for the self-employed
The majority (67%) of workers working from home are employed full-time. Although the self-employed make up a sizeable share (26%), they are not the majority. Over eight in ten (82%) are employed full time among those not working from home.
Looking ahead
The dividing lines around self-employment, part-time employment, and gig workers have been evolving for years. For many information-intensive occupations, being able to work remotely has been a widespread feature for years. Digital nomads are not a new phenomenon.
In some countries, governmental policies around virus control are focused on employers by their number of employees. For example, in the US, recent federal mandates apply only to employers with 100 or more employees. Depending on the employer’s will and ability to meet the orders, this might mean that these larger employers choose to have employees work from home for longer than they may have planned.
I expect the workforce to continue to remain splintered as they were before the pandemic. Full-time employees at large organizations will follow the mandates of their employers. The genuinely self-employed will continue to either work from home or not as their type of work allows. There will still be chaos, uncertainty, and opportunity among those in the middle – the large group of employees working part-time for employers of all sizes and cobbling together a livelihood with gigs and part-time self-employment. This final group will be the most likely to embrace digital transformation to further their lifestyle.
About this TUPdate
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Indexing
Lenses: Work/Life Balance, User Profile
Tables: 120 DRxWFH
Tags: COVID, Pandemic, Telework, Teleworkers, Work from home, Remote workers, Employees, Employer size
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